Short hops and hard knocks with Red Sox beat writer Ian Browne.

Coco wants to play; Manny arrives

With the complex mostly empty, Manny Ramirez took his first steps of Spring Training mid-Wednesday afternoon, dropping off his belongings and then leaving. I’m sure Manny will be the big story tomorrow. He just has that kind of star power.

A day after Jacoby Ellsbury addressed the media, it was Coco Crisp’s turn to speak this morning. My man Mike Petraglia was on the scene and his story is live on redsox.com.

The gist of it is that if Coco isn’t the starting center fielder,that he will ask for a trade.

"I want to play everyday," Crisp said. "I
think everybody wants to play everyday. If you don’t, I think there’s something
wrong with you. I don’t want to sit on the bench. I can cheerlead with the best
of them, but that’s not where I want to be, though."

Interestingly, Coco put on 14 pound of muscle, hoping to add a little more thump to his game.

David Ortiz held his first mass media gathering following the workout and made a strong recommendation that the Red Sox bring back Manny Ramirez beyond this season.

In other news, Terry Francona revealed the pitching alignment for the first few exhibition games. Beckett pitches against Boston College on Feb. 28. Justin Masterson will get the ball in the second college game that day against Northeastern. Dice-K against the Twins on the 29th. Jon Lester pitches on March 1 vs. Minnesota. And Tim Wakefield completes the three-game set against the Twins on Sunday, March 2.

Ian.

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5 Comments

Well, another day closer to our 1st fix of the year. I can feel my withdrawl symptoms subsiding already!!! I can hardly wait!!!! 2 weeks from Friday I’ll be watching our guys take on the O’s here in Fort Lauderdale. Yeah!!!!

Hi, everyone, its great having baseball back, i feel alive again lol. I cant actually wait to see the great year manny is going to have, now with the ellsbury/crisp thing in CF. I think ellsbury is a very talented, explosive, amazing, etc, etc, player and i would like to see him patrolling CF for Boston in the future, however im a coco fan, i value defense a lot and i think defensively coco is better than ellsbury at the moment, ellsbury has the potential to be as good or better than coco defensively, but hes not quite there yet, to my very own opinion, i want to see coco starting CF, let ellsbury learn the few things he has left to know about the game.

Well, Ellsbury hit .353 and thrived in September.
Also we have to remember Ellsbury is only 24, he knows almost evrything a 24 year old could know about baseball, also he was the best defensive player in the minors!

Wow, Manny in camp early?? I thought he said that he’d arrive on the 21st. This is the 1st time in the last few years he’s even been close to being there on time. AND, he trained with thr others in Arizona!! I’m very impressed. I think that he’s taking his numbers declne lat year to heart and is trying his best to avoid the same situation occuring in ’08. I like that everyone seems so up for a repeat season. OH, I LOVE BASEBALL, THE NATION AND OUR SOX!!!

Hello all! Busy putzing around the Cactus league this spring, simply because we live right down the road…. There are some really nice facilities out here…especially the new ones located in Glendale and Surprise. Dodger Town is taking shape…. As for Da Sox, it’s great to see Manny back early. Ellen, you are correct about him being here in ‘Zona… there were quite a few Manny sightings this winter. Hope to get to Ft. Myers sometime in the next few weeks. Take care and see y’all soon.

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